


Twin Hearts

by orphan_account



Category: 18th Century CE RPF, Hamilton - Miranda, Turn (TV 2014)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-08-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:27:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26144848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: “Laurens?! Oh...Tallmadge.”
Relationships: Alexander Hamilton/Elizabeth "Eliza" Schuyler, Alexander Hamilton/John Laurens, Benjamin Tallmadge & Alexander Hamilton, Nathan Hale (1755-1776)/Benjamin Tallmadge
Kudos: 43





	Twin Hearts

**Author's Note:**

> In honor of John Laurens

It is not very late when Benjamin Tallmadge arrives at the Hamilton estate, the sun barely having gone down, and it’s light still a faint orange around the horizon, the sky darkening into hues of purple and blue as the day turns to night. He dismounts, tethering his horse to a nearby tree before walking to the door. He knocks on the door, _knock knock knock,_ before stepping back and waiting for the door to be opened.

After a minute, the door is opened and Mrs. Eliza Hamilton née Schuyler stands at the threshold. She has all the beauty and grace that he remembers from the many seasons ago at Valley Forge. She had kind eyes and a warm smile, graciously knitting socks for soldiers. Her presence, along with Lady Washington’s and few young ladies, had been a comfort, a moral booster amongst the men. It had been disheartening to see them leave, no matter how grateful he was that they were no longer suffering the harshness of the winter elements. However, tonight, her eyes and smile are tinged with sadness. 

“Colonel Tallmadge,” she says, nodding her head towards him in greeting. 

“Mrs. Hamilton,” Benjamin returns. “I apologize for coming unannounced. I am here for your husband. I carry news that I am sure he will want to hear.”

Mrs. Hamilton steps back, out of the door. “Please come in.”

Benjamin does as she instructs, taking his tricorn hat off, clenching it in his hands. He stands there wishing he looked more presentable and less dirty in their home. 

“I apologize that my husband is not here. He is locked away in his study, as usual, but he received some troubling news earlier regarding his friend Lieutenant Colonel Laurens.”

Benjamin looks at the ground, fingers clenching tighter around the brim of his hat. “I, he pauses, “had come to bring him the news. Perhaps offer him some consolation as I knew how close they were.” His lips quirk up humorlessly at the corners. “I now understand why he has, most likely, locked himself away in his study for quite sometime now. I do not wish to bother you any further.” He glances at her, then to the door, then back to her.

Mrs. Hamilton returns his gaze with wide eyes. “I…” she swallows. “How did you know?”

Benjamin looks at her, not unkindly. “I did not know. I simply took an educated guess.”

“An educated guess?” Mrs. Hamilton looks at him curiously. “You must know my Alexander well then.” 

He shrugs his shoulders. “I suppose that I do. We were both members of our General’s military family,” Benjamin says simply. 

“If you know him so well, perhaps you would be able to coax him into coming out long enough to eat,” says Mrs. Hamilton. She looks immediately relieved at the prospect and Benjamin cannot find it in himself to say no.

“Mrs. Hamilton--”

“Eliza, please,” Mrs. Hamilt-- _Eliza_ says.

“Lady Eliza,” he pauses, amusement tickling him when he sees her attempt to hide her displeasure, rolling her eyes and shaking her head slightly. “I will try my best. But I cannot assure you that he will even listen to me.”

“Nonsense,” Eliza says, waving away the suggestion. “Please, follow me. I’ll take you to his study. Hopefully you will be able to make him see sense.” 

She leads him through the house, moving around furniture gracefully in a swish of skirts. He follows her down a few hallways and up the stairs, where a closed door sits at the top of. They climb the stairs, Benjamin a few steps behind Eliza.

Eliza knocks at the door. “Alexander,” she says softly, as if talking to a small child or skittish animal. “Colonel Tallmadge is here to see you. He--” She is cut off by a cry coming from down the hall. “Oh goodness… _Philip_.”

Eliza smiles apologetically at Benjamin. “That would be my son. Perhaps you will have better luck without me here. Please excuse me.” 

She walks past him, her skirts brushing against his legs as she goes down the narrow staircase. Benjamin stands there, at a loss for what to do. He listens to the shrieks down the hall quiet into incorrigible babbles. He sucks in a deep breath, trying to somehow come up with words that he thinks will be comforting at best and sympathetic at worst.

He knocks on the door before it is thrown open in the middle of a knock. He is pulled inside the study, two hands clenching around his forearm in a grip that is almost painful. Benjamin, caught off guard, allows himself to be pulled inside. His mind is racing, thoughts a blur, as he looks at the state of the room. The door slams behind him.

Papers are everywhere, littering the desk, the chairs, the table, and the floor. A decanter sits on top of a stack of papers on the desk, amber liquid almost gone or in the tumbler that sits on the floor a few feet away from the desk. 

“My God… John!” Hamilton cries, words slurring together, pulling Ben closer to him. “I knew you weren’t dead! I knew it!”

He looks a mess, eyes are bloodshot and puffy from crying, his hair falling out of its queue and haphazardly down his back, cravat twisted, waistcoat unbuttoned at the top. He isn’t wearing any shoes or socks either, bear feet step on top of the many papers flooding the floor. 

Hamilton presses a soft kiss to his lips. Benjamin freezes, an overwhelming sense of sadness and understanding washing over him. _Oh no. He and Laurens were closer than I had thought._

Hamilton stumbles away from him. “Oh… oh you’re not my… I… _Tallmadge_. Damnit.” He falls backwards, tripping on air and landing on top of more papers. “I am sorry. So sorry. Sorry. Sorry sorry sorry.”

Apologies leave Hamilton’s mouth as they were the very air he breathes. Benjamin walks toward him and he scrambles backwards towards the wall, toward the corner. Hamilton wails out apologies, mixing in pleas as he speaks. 

“Sorry. Don’t tell anyone. Please. Sorry. Oh please don’t…”

“Hamilton!” Benjamin shouts. He’s not mad, he is simply trying to draw Hamilton’s attention toward him. “I was not going to tell anyone. Understand?” 

Hamilton doesn’t react. “Do you understand me?” Benjamin says again, lacing an undertone of authority into his voice. 

This time, Hamilton nods. He doesn’t look up to Benjamin, keeping his eyes fixed on the floor as he squeaks out, “Yes.” 

“I came here to tell you the news that you received earlier today,” he says, avoiding mentioning Laurens by name or saying anything about him at all. He understands that pain well. “But now that I am here, I can see that you have already heard. I wish that I had been there, however. For you were there, telling me the news when he-- _Nathan--_ died. I had hoped to provide you the same luxury.”

Hamilton snorts, eyes still plastered to the floor, chin down. For once, the man has nothing to say, his lips red and puffy from being abused by his teeth, pressed tightly together. _Silent._ Benjamin squats down in front of his friend, looking at his face. He wants to reach a hand out and cup Hamilton’s face so that he would look at him. 

Despite what he wants, he stops himself short. He knows that the delicate touch--the touch of a _lover_ \--would cause much more pain than necessary. He knows. He knows that particular strain of grief well. Instead, he stays as he is for a moment, crouched in front of his friend, before sliding over next to him. 

Their shoulders brush up against each other and Benjamin wonders if what he’s doing is alright. Then Hamilton leans into him, arm tucked in between the two of them, head resting slightly on top of Benjamin’s shoulder. Benjamin shifts, bringing his arm around his friend, pulling Hamilton into his side.

Benjamin isn’t aware of how much time passes before Hamilton speaks in a watery, less slurred voice. 

“I loved him,” he says brokenly into the silence of the room. “I _loved_ him.”

“I know, I know,” Benjamin whispers, eyes unfocused on a document laying on the floor by his foot. 

“ _How?_ ” Hamilton asks. Benjamin supposes that the man could be surprised, but the defeat in his voice startles him. He blinks his eyes, clearing the haze and looks down. Hamilton is crying, tears falling from his eyes leaving trails on his cheeks. The queue around his hair has come undone leaving his hair to fall around his shoulders like a curtain of fire.

“ _Nathan Hale.”_ He pauses for a moment, the words shocking himself and holding an incomprehensible, but undeniable gravity. “I loved him more than anything. He was my brother, my friend… He was so much more than I could ever explain. More than I could ever hope to explain, or to describe. He was the wordsmith, after all. I was simply one of his muses.”

Hamilton gasps, biting back the many questions that Benjamin can see floating in his head, waiting for more. _Why am I talking about Nathan? Why am I telling him about… I never… I can’t…_

More words fall from his lips and Hamilton holds onto them, treating them as if they were the last, precious drops of water left in a flask in the middle of summer.

“I think he loved me. Loved me like I loved him. We were so close… He told me more than once, but we never did anything. We wouldn’t have, being the people that we were. I’d like to think that I would have… kissed him if I ever saw him again. I suppose I will never know. Not while I still live and breathe--” Benjamin chokes on the word, the world slightly blurred at the edges. 

“So yes, I know what it is like to lose someone who is your entire world. It is not a feeling that you can so easily dismiss nor forget. It lingers. It is as if you were shot, but the pain never truly comes until you are forced to pry the ball out of the wound... I _know_.” 

Benjamin bites his lip, worrying the flesh between his teeth. _I have said too much_. Hamilton sniffles beside him, shifting slightly.

“The pain never goes away? Never? It is unbearable now,” Hamilton says quietly. Benjamin shakes his head solemnly. _No. Never._

“I have lived with the same sadness for six years. From my experience, it never does.”

Hamilton makes a small, wounded sound in the back of his throat. “John and I… we did everything we could together. I would tell him that I loved him and he would say the same sentiments back to me. No series of essays, no book that I could write would ever be able to fully capture his essence. There is… _was_ so much that people would never know about him. I will keep his secrets locked away in my heart, so that only myself and God may know.

“I loved him. I would scream it from the mountains or into battle, if I could. Declare it louder than any bell. But the world is unfair in that regard, and I would subject my Betsy and her family to the misfortune that would inevitably follow…”

They talk, exchanging stories of longing, stories of happier days, stories of love, long past the last candles burn out and darkness immerses them. The darkness is safe, covering them from prying eyes and ears. Sleep soon follows and they remain in the corner of Hamilton’s study, surrounded by papers and broken quills, comforted in each other’s broken-heartedness. 

They sleep, slumped against the wall and each other with tears drying on their faces, both a mess. But most times, messes can be picked up and made into something of beauty. Like a phoenix rising from its ashes, twin hearts, both broken, could be remade but never the same.

A space designated and handcarved for only one soul, cannot be replaced by anything but it. Two halves do not always make a whole. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Come say hello on my [tumblr](https://bladesnflannel.tumblr.com/)  
> -J


End file.
